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Today AMD are launching their new range of R7 and R9 video cards, minus the flagship R9 290X, which is coming later. This particular review focuses on the reference AMD R9 270X. The reference card has a price point set at $199, targeting a wide audience of enthusiast gamers who demand excellent Direct X 11 performance.
The R9 270X is designed to enter into the AMD mid range, hitting a price point between £160 and £180 inc vat. Today we test the hardware against the last generation HD7850 and ever popular HD7870 Tahiti LE. We also add in the GTX760 as a additional performance analysis… it is worth bearing in mind that partner cards have dropped to around £190-£200 inc vat in recent weeks.
The R9 270X will be sold with clock speeds up to 1.05ghz – all of which will have 1,280 Stream Processors. The reference card will demand power from 2 x 6 pin PCI E connectors and it complies with the PCI E 3.0 standard. There will be 2GB and 4GB configurations with memory speeds set up to 5.6Gbps.
The official AMD R9 270X is a dual slot card featuring the famous red and black colour combination. The small fan rests at the side of the card, in a position to force warm air along the PCB and out the back of the case. No retail packaging or accessories as this card is supplied direct from AMD.
The card is built around a black PCB and this particular reference sample features 2GB of GDDR5.
The AMD R9 270X is Crossfire capable in a 2 way configuration.
The R9 270X takes power from two 6 pin PCIE power connectors.
The card has a DVI-I and DVI-D connector, and two full sized HDMI and DisplayPort connectors.
It is widely known that AMD Radeon HD 7xxx parts (and earlier) currently can support a maximum of 2 HDMI/DVI displays, and the rest must be DisplayPort connections (or active DisplayPort adapters).
AMD Radeon R9 Series can now support up to three HDMI/DVI displays for use with AMD Eyefinity technology. A set of displays which support identical timings is required to enable this feature. The display clocks and timing for this feature are configured at boot time. As such, display hot‐plugging is not supported for the third HDMI/DVI connection.
A reboot is required to enable three HDMI/DVI displays.DisplayPort outputs are supported in addition to the three HDMI/DVI displays (up to 6 in total).
The cooler is substantial, with the copper base connecting into several copper heatpipes. AMD are using 2GB of SK Hynix GDDR5 memory on this board.
The R270X is built on the 28nm process. The core is clocked at 1,050mhz and it has 32 ROPs, 80 TMU's and 1,280 Stream Processors. The 2GB of GDDR5 is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The memory is clocked at 1,400mhz (5.6Gbps effective).
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.
For our review today we are using the latest Catalyst 13.11 and Forceware 331.40 drivers. These drivers have the latest performance enhancements and bug fixes.
We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.
Comparison cards:
VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE (975mhz core / 1500mhz memory)
VTX3D VChamp HD7850 (1000mhz core / 1225mhz memory)
ASUS HD7850 (860mhz core / 1,200mhz memory)
eVGA GTX760 SC (1072 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Rome 2
Dirt Showdown
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light
GRID 2
Alien V Predator
Splinter Cell Blacklist
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset.
A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.
Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:
- Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
- Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
- Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
- Multicore CPU support
- Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
- Powerful C++ API
- Comprehensive performance profiling system
- Flexible XML-based data structures
We use the settings shown above at 1920×1080.
AMD's R9 270x averages 54.6 frames per second, which is just slightly ahead of the VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE graphics card.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
We test with the settings above both at 1920×1080.
The R9 270x averages the same frame rate as the HD7870 Tahiti LE, with a slightly better minimum frame rate.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.
The final score of 29,983 is almost identical to the HD7870 Tahiti LE, which scores 29,923 points.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.
After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
In this Direct X 11 benchmark, the R9 270x scores 8,222 points, noticeably ahead of the HD7870 Tahiti LE, which scores 7,882 points.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.
Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.
To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”
Again, very closely matched against the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.
To test the cards we used a 1920×1080 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.
Identical frame rate compared with the HD7870 Tahiti LE card, averaging 78 frames per second and dropping to 46 frames per second in more intensive sections of the environment.
Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.
This game is still a system killer at these maximised settings. We test at 1920×1080.
Smooth frame rates with this engine, averaging 37, and dropping to 26 frames per second in very taxing outdoors sections of the environment.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.
To test the cards today we use the ULTRA profile settings shown above at 1920×1080.
Interesting to see the R9 270X delivers a substantial performance increase over the HD7870 Tahiti LE with this specific title, almost matching the eVGA GTX760 SC.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.
Today we test the hardware at 1920×1080 with the Ultra profile and 8 x MSAA.
Dirt Showdown runs extremely well on the new AMD R9 270X, averaging around 6-9fps more than the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.
We use the ULTIMATE profile shown above and test at 1920×1080.
Performance in this game is strong, even with ULTIMATE settings, averaging 45 frames per second. The HD7870 Tahiti LE averages 1-2 fps more in this particular test.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike.
4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.
We test this game with the built in benchmark with very high quality settings at 1920×1080 – details shown in the image above.
An average frame rate of 41 is good in this particular test, matching the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.
We test at 1920×1080 with the Ultra image quality preset, as shown above. 8x MSAA was enabled to improve image quality.
Strong frame rates in GRID 2 – again almost identically matched to the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series.
The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base. Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade.
Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.
We test with a series of high image quality settings as shown above and with 4x MSAA and 16 x Anisotropic filtering enabled.
The GTX760 delivers the best results in this test, by a clear margin – although the R9 270X is noticeably quicker in this test than the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature.
We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
As expected the official AMD cooler delivers average results, one of the hottest running cards on test, and noticeably higher than the VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE. We will be testing partner cards soon and we hope that those results will be better.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.
We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
The R9 270X fan spins at around 1,110rpm when idle, and this increases to up to 2,500 rpm under full load. The single small fan generates a fairly high level of noise, measuring up to 36.7 dBa via our meter. It is clearly audible at full load. We will be testing some partner cards soon and we will expect these results to be significantly better.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and the synthetic stress test Furmark and record both results.
Power consumption from the card is very good, peaking at around 150-155 watts when gaming.
For our overclocking tests today we used the latest version of MSI Afterburner, which is based around Rivatuner.
There was some decent headroom on our engineering sample. We managed to increase the core clock speed from 1050mhz to 1,176mhz – translating into a 12% overclock. The memory could be overclocked from 1,400mhz to 1,567mhz (6.26Gbps effective) – which was also a 12% overclock. Obviously every card will be different, but we would imagine that AMD partners will be pushing their overclocked models to around 1,100mhz-1,150mhz.
The overclock translated into a very healthy score increase in 3dMark 11, from a graphics score of 8,222 points to a GTX760 beating 9,112 points. It will be very interesting to test some of the highly overclocked partner cards later.
The AMD R9 270X is very capable solution, targeting the large audience who want a powerful graphics card without spending a fortune.
As our testing has highlighted it will easily outperform a standard HD7870 and tackle the enhanced HD7870 Tahiti LE edition head on, equally matched in some Direct X 11 engines and faster in others.
Testing a reference card is always a tricky proposition as we know that AMD partners will release superior solutions shortly after launch. Enhanced coolers, lower noise levels and boosted core clock speeds can certainly help sell a product to the discerning Kitguru audience.
We would like to point out to our readers that we already have several R9 270X partner cards, but AMD have forced a bizarre restriction on releasing some partner card reviews with specific press – 2 days after these launch articles today.
We will therefore follow up this reference review shortly with another featuring a modified Asus R9 270X. This card is both faster and quieter than the reference board we are testing for this article. Unfortunately this leaves us only with the R9 270X reference board today. We can only review what we have, or in this case what AMD choose to allow us to review.
The reference board is uninspiring when it comes to cooling and acoustic performance.
I have lost count of how many times I have said in reviews that AMD need to move away from their insistence on adopting a tiny small fan at one side of the cooler. Nvidia seem able to construct their reference coolers to a higher standard than AMD. An example? The reference cooled GTX Titan has a single fan and it is quieter than this R9 270X, so you can take from that what you will. Those hoping that the monster three fan cooler on the HD7990 perhaps signaled a positive change in direction will be sorely disappointed in what AMD have delivered today.
Power consumption from the R9 270X is noteworthy and when we get around to testing a version of this card with a good cooler we are sure it will deliver the goods. As it stands, what we have today is a card with similar performance to custom HD7870 Tahiti LE solutions, but one that runs hotter and louder.
AMD say the R9 270X will cost $199 USD. Using a currency converter translates this $199 into £125. Adding 20% VAT (£25) gives a total price of £150. We have been told by retail partners that the R9 270X will cost around £160 inc vat in the UK, with custom solutions between £10 and £20 more expensive (up to £180). We advise anyone contemplating a purchase of this card to wait for one with an enhanced 2 fan cooling solution.
Come back later in the week when we get permission to review dual fan R9 270X solutions.
Pros:
- excellent performance and power consumption.
- decent core headroom for overclocking.
- price point looks competitive, especially as it settles over the coming weeks.
Cons:
- reference cooler is uninspiring.
- Recent price cuts to OC GTX760 under £200 pose a serious threat.
Kitguru says: Excellent performance but the overall package is let down by a weak reference cooling solution.
So the only card with the new audio features is a budget model? what? The 270x is basically the same performance as a HD7870 Tahiti LE and 280X is a 7970ghz ed?
Anyone else wondering if AMD have anything new at all to release? 290x? come on. its going to be £600, no one can afford that!!@
@Ben Both companies have done the same in terms of “re-branding”, only the GTX 780 is a new card.
For this card, i am somewhat impressed how they have managed to beat a 7870 LE, whilst consuming a lot less power. Cooler is a bit of a let down, but i would never buy a reference card anyway, ASUS Direct CU all the way!
I have a HIS R9 270 (nonX) I was able to get a stable 1100mhz overclock, For some reason I can only use the HIS iTurbo program to overclock it, When I used Afterburner it cause driver crashes, When i use saphire Trix it caused a Red screen, LOL At first I was angry thinking I got a card that would not overclock well, But when I tried the HIS iTurbo software and +4 on powertune it worked like a charm, I ran Unigine Heaven 4 times just to make sure. I may try 1150mhz next, But I should not press my luck. I should be happy it clocks to and past 270X speeds and calm down. But not bad for a GPU I only paid $179 for.